thoughtfully, as she blinked up at the sun, “It is harder for Lucy than for us, because her family are all away. Our brothers are gone, Edie, and my father, but we both have our mothers left—though Mum wants to join Cousin Sally this summer, Lucy, so perhaps we’ll be left alone. You know your mother wrote how few there are over there to help, and how many of those poor French children are without homes. I wish I were old enough to go.”

Lucy’s eyes flashed instant response to her cousin’s words. In spite of her hard daily tasks her eager, restless spirit was still unsatisfied, and she dreamed, as in the year gone by, of greater and braver efforts.

“That’s so,” assented Edith, lazily opening her eyes, as she pondered Janet’s first words. “Of course Janet is your cousin, but she’s Scotch and English, and you’re American. Is all your family in France, Lucy?”

“No—there’s William,” said Lucy, smiling to herself as a little figure came before her mind’s eye with the name. “He’s my six-year-old brother, at my grandmother’s in Connecticut. But my father is with the A.E.F.[1] So is Bob—in aviation—and Mother is behind the lines.” She sighed, but a quick realization of the truth made her add more cheerfully, “Still, it’s a lot to be as near to them as I am.”

1.  American Expedition to France.

1.

“I should think so!” exclaimed Janet, sitting up with a sudden return of energy at sight of a quick moving figure among the gardens. “Think if you’d been left way off in America.” She turned to her cousin as she spoke with a look of real understanding, for already frank, generous Janet felt a warm friendship for the courageous little American, and found in Lucy no less a devotion than her own to the Allies’ cause. “Here comes Mary Lee,” she said, nodding toward the advancing figure of a tall girl of eighteen, dressed, like themselves, in khaki working suit. “Time’s up, I guess.”

The two rose quickly to their feet, and gathered up rakes and hoes. “Time, Mary?” asked Edith, lingering for a final stretch. “It seems about ten minutes to-day since we came out from luncheon.”

“It’s a whole hour, lazybones,” said Mary Lee, smiling as she showed the watch on her tanned wrist. “I want you three to finish hoeing the corn over here, if you will.”

With no great enthusiasm but with obedient alacrity, the young farm-hands shouldered their hoes and walked 

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